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REVIEW 



OF 



DR. ALBERT PFISTER'S 



AMERIKANISCHE REVOLUTION 



1775— 1783, 



BY 



J.- G.v ROSENGARTEN. 



(Reprinted from <0erman Sltttcricatt Unnats, February 1905.) 
GERMAN AMERICAN PRESS. 

PHIt,ADKIvPHIA. 



Ui.: 



20My'05 



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IReview* 



Die amerikanische Revolution, 1775-1783; Entwicklungs- 

GESCHICHTE DER GrUNDLAGE ZUM FrEISTAAT WIE ZUM WeLT- 
REICH, UNTER HeRVORHEBUNG DES DEUTSCHEN AnTEILS. Fuf 

das deutsche und amerikanische Volk geschrieben von Albert 
Pfister. 2 Bande (erster Band: Vorwort, i Seite, 400 Seiten, 
mit einer Karte, 415 Seiten, Register 14 Seiten). Stuttgart 
und Berlin, 1904. F. G. Cotta'sche Buchhandlung Nachfolger. 

Dr. Albert Pfister, General Major z. D., has done for the Ger- 
man and German-reading world what Trevelyan has done for Eng- 
lish and English-reading students. He has shown himself a master 
of the modem historical school, putting life and action in every 
page, and lending a new interest to an old story by his admirable 
handling of the new material that he has used. He has found a 
good use for the material gathered by Rattermann in Der Deutsche 
Pionier, and by Seidensticker, Bittinger, Schuricht, Evans, Knortz 
and others. He has drawn largely from American, English, German 
and French writers, and has availed himself of the help of Prof. 
Schneider, President of the American Institute of Germanics, North- 
western University, Evanston-Chicago. He aims, and succeeds in 
his effort, to emphasize what has been done in and for American 
history, by German Americans, both those born in the Fatherland 
and those of American birth. He points to the results of the large 
infusion of German blood and thought, in the gradual development 
of the American colonies ; their struggle for independence, and their 
long and finally successful effort to establish and maintain that 
union and nationality in which the best fruits of Anglo-Saxon love 
of ordered liberty and constitutional government are now ripened. 
He aims at following the gradual steps by which the colonies were 
planted, their union and independence secured, and the nation put 
in its present greatness. Much of the first volume recites the growth 
of the first settlements, the development of the different colonies, 
the divergent views and aims of the men who planned and planted 
them, and the gradual steps that led to union, in the defence against 
the French and their allies, the hostile Indians. He shows how 



2 Review. 

slowly the idea of union developed, and how it was fostered by the 
mistakes and ill-treatment of the English government, by the feeble 
and incompetent Ministers who succeeded Pitt, and by the over- 
weening absolute despotic personal government of George the Third. 
He points out the ties of language, law, religion, that held the 
colonies in close alliance with the mother country and the deliberate 
way in which the King and his Ministers drove their subjects across 
the ocean, slowly and unwillingly to take up arms in defence of 
their rights. Trevelyan has shown how strongly many Englishmen 
of all ranks and pursuits sympathized with the colonies. With the 
skill and interest of a trained soldier, General Pfister points to the 
gradual organization of the American army under Washington's 
able leadership, his eager approval of the work done by Steuben, 
and Kalb and Lafayette and the trained French soldiers, who came 
first as volunteers and then under Rochambeau with the allied army. 
He points out that while Frederick the Great sent no officers or 
men or munitions of war, he followed the war with close interest 
and showed openly his sympathy with the struggling colonists. Of 
the twenty-nine American generals, not less than eleven were born 
in Europe, and Steuben and Kalb brought the best lessons gained 
in German and French armies and applied them to American needs. 
General Pfister shows a familiar use of the diaries and reports of 
the Germans who served with the British, and quotes freely and 
aptly from them, for they were intelligent and impartial observers, 
whose evidence has been too little considered. 

He shows of how little value cities were in the military geog- 
raphy of the American War of Independece, and how Washington 
wisely neglected them, while Howe and Clinton under orders from 
the British government wasted strength and opportunity in trying 
to hold Boston, New York and Philadelphia. He awards Wash- 
ington the highest praise for his skill in organizing out of the raw 
material at his disposition such effective armies. He dwells with 
pride on the good accounts left by General Riedesel and by his heroic 
wife, who not only took part in his campaign, but shared his im- 
prisonment and ligthened the hardships of his men. He points to 
the Germans who shared in the burden of the war, the large pro- 
portion of them in New York, Pennsylvania, Alaryland and Vir- 
ginia regiments, to the officers like Muhlenberg and Weldon, Schott 



Review. 3 

and von Heer and Ottendorff, Kalteisen and the German Riflemen 
of South Carolina, and to the good opinion Washington had of 
them. He refers with pride to the fact that the first announcement 
of the Declaration of Independence was in a German newspaper in 
Philadelphia, and to its welcome in Germany. He dwells on the 
encouragement that Frederick the Great gave to France to join in 
the alliance that contributed far more than Prussia could do to the 
successful outcome of the American Revolution. He uses with 
impar-ial justice the evidence of Wiederhold and the other Germa.i 
officers, and of the Americans as to the good service of Kalb at 
White Plains and of Knyphausen. He praises the work done by 
plain Germans, such as Christopher Ludwig, and the maps of the 
German staff officers. He quotes the Hessian account of the battle 
of Germantown, as the best evidence, and Mme. Riedesel as impartial 
in her good opinions of the Americans and her unfavorable reports 
of the British. He uses Kalb's reports to Broglie as the opinions 
of an expert experienced officer. He points out that Steuben was 
not a Lieutenant General in Frederick the Great's service, but in 
1730 Major and Adjutant General of a Free Corps, — that he left 
the Prussian service in 1763, after just such experience as was the 
best training for his work in America, and that he came with Frank- 
lin's recommendation, — that he showed how well he deserved it, 
and how wisely Franklin had judged, for Steuben's great service 
was in disciplining the American army, utilizing its good material, 
and making of the American sharpshooters the American light 
infantry. The German native soldiers in the Second. Third, Fifth. 
Sixth and Eighth Pennsylvania and Eighth and Ninth Virginia, in 
Washington's Body Guard, in Armand's Corps, were all ready for 
his training. The fact that deserters from the German Allies were 
enlisted by the French, but not by the American armies, shows the 
high standard set for the latter, while in the German regiments in 
the French army these men found their right place. Frederick the 
Great's letter to d'Alembert of August 13, 1777, showed the opinion 
of Europe's wisest king, — with the surrender of Burgoyne he closed 
the Rhine to the passage of German troops on their way to America, 
and became an ally, a secret ally, but an influential friend of the 
Americans; he showed it in his letter of November 3, 1777, to his 
brother. England by its Ministers d'nounced him in February, 1781, 



4 Review. 

as the worst enemy of the British Empire. France was encouraged 
by him in the alliance which Franklin neg-otiated with consummate 
ability, and Spain and Holland soon joined in the war with Great 
Britain. The old Prussian king foresaw the advantage of the new 
"open order" learned in America, but the French applied it and thus 
were ready for their victories over other European armies. The 
Hessians gave faithful and not very flattering accounts of New 
York and Philadelphia, but they were equally honest in describing 
the excesses of their men in their raids through Jersey, heavily 
atoned for by the change of that colony from loyalist to whig. 
Then, too, General Pfister points to the thousand Germans in the 
French regiments, and the two thousand in the English, at York- 
town, — all used as pawns in the great game of war. German was 
the language of the night watchman who told Philadelphia of Corn- 
wallis' surrender, and of the elder Muhlenberg when he preached 
a sermon there in celebration of the victory. The effect of their 
American experience on French and Germans is a factor in the 
later history of both countries, — in the French Revolution and the 
French victories through Europe, and in the gradual evolution of 
unity in Germany after its struggles in 1815, in 1848, in 1866 and in 
1870. The return home of the German allied troops and of the 
French allies was followed by momentous results, for many of the 
leaders in Germany's uprising and of the victories of 
France had learned useful and abiding lessons in their 
American campaigns. The treaty of the United States with 
Prussia in 1785 was the initial movement in European 
recognition of America as a world power, and it was 
Frankhn's account of the American people and their govern- 
ment sent to Frederick the Great in 1778 that prepared the way 
for this recognition. These are among the salient features of Gen- 
eral Pfister's vivid description of the American War of Independ- 
ence, and of the factors, too often hitherto neglected, among which 
German participation may be counted, that have attracted little 
attention from earlier writers. It is no small merit thus to tell the 
story in a new light and with new use of old facts. 

J. G. ROSENGARTEN. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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